A few days ago, I spoke with one of them, an older gentleman, born in 1960, named Alfonso. He came to the U.S. in 1986 from Cuernavaca, looking for a more sustaining income. He ended up making Chicago his home because he had a brother living here. Alfonso now lives in Albany Park—which is about half Latino.
He said that around 7AM. on most weekdays, he'll take his post on the McCormick side of Home Depot's parking lot, hoping to be hired out as a painter. The work can earn him around $180 to $200 a day. He said the jobs, when they came, helped a little in making ends meet and made it easier for him to take care of his wife, who has significant disabilities.
I wanted to ask him more, but he'd become guarded with my prying, so I switched topics and asked him if he likes music. He said he was a big fan of cumbia. He was kind enough not to roll his eyes and walk away after seeing my blank stare. He did a little hand-holding and played me a cumbia tune he's fond of: Mario Monte's La Monjita Volador (The Flying Little Nun). I liked it!
Later, I did some online digging to start filling up my ignorance hole, and I learned a little about the genre's history.
Cumbia originated in coastal Columbia in the 19th century from a mixture of European, African and indigenous traditions. Over time, cumbia spread across Latin America, the form being adapted in the different destinations in which it arrived. In Mexico, the brakes were put on the Columbian tempos, and a cool new street culture evolved, involving sonidos (mobile crews with portable parties, which included sonideros—DJs, speaker stacks, mixers, amps, mics, and lighting rigs), who organized festivities. The charismatic sonideros would attract people from the barrios who savored the new music and the dancing and joyful socializing that usually came with it.
It sounded a little bit like the EDM set-up that Kevin Fullam described here a few weeks ago in his meditation on Sirāt (though probably with more Modelo than Molly).
I was told that cumbia has a wide variety of lyrical subjects, but that a lot are cheerful and humorous, with a feel-good vibe. Here's a verse from the tune Alfonso shared with me, with a playful domestic disagreement:
Oigan lo que dice mi mujer (Listen to what my wife says)
Oigan lo que le contesto yo (Listen to how I answer her)
Ella dice: “Tú no eres yeyé” (She says: “You ain't hip")
Yo le digo: “Tampoco gogó” (I tell her: “You’re not so flashy either")
¿Ahora cómo me compongo yo? (How do I get out of this now?)
Porque está cabreada mi mujer (Because my wife is really pissed)
Me dice que le cante un gogó (She’s telling me to sing her a gogó song)
Cómo está, que vo’ a cantar un yeyé (Given how she is, I’m gonna sing a yeyé)
Porque, si no se lo canto yo (Because if I don’t sing it to her)
“Te juro que me bajo, yeyé” (I swear I’ll quit, yeyé)
Though this tune's lyrics have nothing to do with its story line, it's a safe bet that the title comes from an American sitcom from the late 60s, called The Flying Nun (which aired in Mexico as La Monja Voladura). Sally Field played Sister Bertrille, a young lady from the Chicago suburbs, who becomes a nun in the Convent San Tanco, in Puerto Rico. Chicago's mentioned in the pilot (with the classic misinterpretation of our moniker): "whoever calls Chicago 'the Windy City' just hasn't been to San Juan." We hear too that Sister Betrille is arriving about three weeks after she was arrested at a free-speech protest rally—though there's nothing in the pilot to suggest she and Bernardine Dohrn were fellow travelers.
Sister Bertrille's unique skills are born thanks to an aerodynamic cornette, which is part of her convent's habit. The cornette is a stiff, winged headdress, once associated with the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, a French Catholic order whose namesake you can also see on the the campus of one of Chicago's most well-know universities. Sister Betrille's cornette catches the strong Puerto Rican winds and lifts her petite frame into the air, allowing her to fly.
In the pilot, there are frequent comparisons of Sister Betrille to a pelican, which may be a tribute to Tere Ríos, the author The Fifteenth Pelican, the sitcom's source material. In her novel, Sister Bertrille is occasionally flying alongside flocks of pelicans—an “extra” bird who doesn’t belong, but nevertheless joins the formation, an outsider within the flock.
One can't help but wonder how your average parishioner would have taken some of The Flying Nun's storylines and imagery. The pilot even has a scene where Sister Bertrille is walking on water! Forgive me, but I also can't help mentioning a memory of the pelican mentioned in Dante's Paradiso (canto 25): “This soul is he who lay upon the breast of Christ our Pelican, and he was asked from on the Cross to serve in the great task." The line comes from the medieval belief that pelicans fed their young with their own blood, metaphorizing the crucifixion and Eucharist.
The producers were apparently aware they were walking on thin ice as, prior to launching the series, they recruited the National Catholic Office for Radio and Television (NCORT) as a series adviser, for which they received an on-screen credit. However, due to the generally positive portrayal of the nuns' religious and social activities, the series was rarely criticized by Catholic authorities and was favorably received by many.
I asked Alfonso if he was Catholic. He said he was and regularly attends services at the Queen of Angels Church at Queen of Apostles Parish. I like the church's Marian name, as I've been long attracted to the reverence paid to the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexican Catholic culture—to the protective and compassionate qualities of a holy mother figure.
I didn't want to get political with Alfonso, or delve into frostier matters, but I did ask him what he thought of Robert Prevost, the guy from Chicago (who's also fluent in Spanish and has Peruvian citizenship) who recently became Pope Leo XIV. I wanted to know if he felt as optimistic as I do about having such a morally principled figure at the head of the Catholic church. I had no success getting his opinion, probably because of my shitty Spanglish. So I expressed my sincere gratitude for his taking the time to share some of his story with me, and wished him a happy Cinco de Mayo.
He told me he'd be spending the holiday in the Home Depot's parking lot, fingers crossed for some work.
This is the debut of Digressions of a Nosy Parker, a series where Bryon Giddens-White asks questions of Chicagoans he's been curious about and writes about them through his unique lens, complete with interesting detours (and plenty of music).